How To Apply for a Lower Position

[Beggar]

Greetings, all.

As some might know, I'm in the job market again. Although I've got nearly 15 years under my belt, I've never been in one industry long enough to be an expert at anything. This leads to my present quandry.

I've applied for an ME position at a local company that also has a posting for a Senior ME. I applied for the lower position because I don't have some of the specific skills required by the senior position. On the other hand, I do have a fair amount of PM experience and other general engineering experience.

They contacted me yesterday for a phone interview this morning and they said, "Thanks for applying for the Sr. ME position."

So, how do I deal with this tactfully? I'd prefer not to spend any time pointing out my deficiencies but I'm afraid that if they evaluate me against the requirements of the Sr. position, I won't get past the HR screener with whom I'll be speaking.

I've had a couple of thoughts:

1) The senior position may be on track for relocation in the next few months. I could use that to defer back into the junior position.

2) I could be honest and say that I have no professional experience in a couple of those areas but did study it in school (which is true).

3) I could just down play the deficiencies and focus on the positives. I can at least speak intelligently about the areas where I'm weak.

4) I could ask whether my resume has undergone a technical review. If so, it's probably less of an issue.

I believe I can do the job and can come up to speed on the areas where I'm weak because I did pretty well in those courses in college. Of course, I still don't have any practical experience in those areas.

Any thoughts?

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[Beggar]

Perhaps if things progress further, you and I could have an offline discussion in a bit more detail. You've seen my work history. I really don't want to go into another job that's not going to work out for one reason or another.

I'm in a fairly stable place from which to job hunt so I'd like to get it right.

--------------------
How much do YOU owe?

http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

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[Beggar]

Heckler, one other thing:

Was your experience in the post-2002 era or with earlier owner?

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How much do YOU owe?

http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

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[IRstuff]

Bear in mind that when you talk about a "company," you're actually talking about one or two people in HR, who are actually clueless about what they're looking for and can only go by what's on the requisition. That's the case at our HR. Essentially a job requisition is simply a specification for an engineer. Something that doesn't fit the specification oughtn't get an interview ;-)

Part of the blame is HR and part of the blame is the manager who has poorly "specified" his requirements or has given poor instructions on how to weed out the resumes.

TTFN

 

[Heckler]

Beggar,

It was post-2002 but I've known people that have worked there since the early 90's. If you want to talk off-line contact Chris on his website and I give him permission to give you my e-mail address.

IRstuff - I totaly agree with you but in this instance the HR rep said I would be better suited for the less position they have open not the Sr ME. This was all based on my not have direct supervision of any personal...ie writing reviews. So being one of three Project Leaders on a project that was going to be a 20 million dollar project once it got into production didn't count.

I said okay I would be interested in the ME position but when I talked to the engineering manager he was under the impression I was interested in the Sr ME position. I said didn't the HR rep talk to you and give you the feedback from the previous interview.....the line went dead.

The funny thing about this is I always see their adverts for engineers which tells me they need to loosen up on their specifications and maybe take someone that has experience in other areas.

 

[tripleZ]

Beggar,

You said that you had a fair amount of P/M experience. Are you referring to powder metallurgy or something else? And are you still interested in the powder metallurgy field?

If so, I can dig up the name of the guy who recruited me to my current position (if you're interested of course). He used to be the president of the P/M firm I'm working for, and currently specializes in placing P/M engineers in roles throughout the country.

Speaking of which, if you have CIP/HIP experience and know anything about rare metals (titanium was one), HC Starck in Michigan is looking for a Process Engineer. I managed to pry this out of a recruiter from the latest round of calls I've rec'd.

 

[IRstuff]

Heckler,

If you were one of 3 project leads, how was it possible that you didn't have direct supervision of people?

For people assigned to IPTs, the IPT lead is the direct supervisor and should have performance review inputs during the review cycle, or at least, that's the way it supposed to be done. If the person is on multiple IPTs, then the functional manager is supposed to take a weighted average of the individual IPTL's inputs.

Chronic ads might also be a symptom of high turnover, so not going there might have been a good thing ;-)

TTFN

 

[Heckler]

IRstuff,

It's a small company with two MEs, the President and fifty manufacturing staff. The two of us do our own drawings for the components that we manufacture in-house and manage the buy components that go into the system.

I asked them about the chronic ads and they assured me the positions were growth needs not turnover based. Well since I have an internal mole I already knew the situation but wanted to know if they were on the up & up.

Best Regards,

Heckler
Sr. Mechanical Engineer
SW2005 SP 5.0 & Pro/E 2001
Dell Precision 370
P4 3.6 GHz, 1GB RAM
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NVIDIA Quadro FX 1400
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Never argue with an idiot. They'll bring you down to their level and beat you with experience every time.